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The Art of Life Series
_The Super Race_
THE ART OF LIFE SERIES
_Edward Howard Griggs, Editor_
The Super Race
AN AMERICAN PROBLEM
BY SCOTT NEARING, Ph.D.
WHARTON SCHOOL, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
AUTHOR OF "SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT," ETC.
NEW YORK
B. W. HUEBSCH
1919
Copyright, 1912, by B. W. HUEBSCH
First printing, May, 1912
Second printing, May, 1919
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
TO THE MOTHERS AND FATHERS OF THE SUPER RACE
FOREWORD
For ages men have sought to perpetuate their memories in enduring
monuments of brass and of stone. Yet, in their efforts to build lasting
memorials they have neglected the most enduring monument of all--the
Monument of Posterity. These farseeing ones have overlooked their real
opportunity; for in posterity--in the achievements of their children's
children, men may best hope to reflect a lasting greatness.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE CALL OF THE SUPER RACE 13
II EUGENICS--THE SCIENCE OF RACE CULTURE 26
III SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT--THE SCIENCE OF MOLDING INSTITUTIONS 44
IV EDUCATION--THE SCIENCE OF INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT 55
V THE AMERICAN OPPORTUNITY 75
_The Super Race_
CHAPTER I
THE CALL OF THE SUPER RACE
As a very small boy, I distinctly remember that stories of the discovery
of America and Australia, of the exploration of Central Africa and of the
invention of the locomotive, the steamboat, and the telegraph made a deep
impression on my childish mind; and I shall never forget going one day to
my mother and saying:--
"Oh, dear, I wish I had been born before everything was discovered and
invented. Now, there is nothing left for me to do."
Brooding over it, and wondering why it should be so, my boyish soul felt
deeply the tragedy of being born into an uneventful age. I fully believed
that the great achievements of the world were in the past. Imagine then my
joy when, in the course of my later studies, it slowly dawned upon me
that the age in which I lived was, after all, an age of unparalleled
activity. I saw the much vaunted discoveries and inventions of by-gone
days in their true proportions. They no longer preempted the whole
world--present and future, as well as past, but, freed from romance, they
ranged themselves in the form of a foundation upon which the structure of
civilization is building. The successive steps in human achievement, from
the use of fire to the harnessing of electricity, constituted a process of
evolution creating "a stage where every man must play his part"--a part
expanding and broadening with each succeeding generation; and I saw that I
had a place among the actors in this play of progress. The forward steps
of the past need not, and would not prevent me from achieving in the
present--nay, they might even make a place, if I could but find it, for my
feet; they might hold up my hands, and place within my grasp the keen
tools with which I should do my work.
The school boy, passing from an attitude of contemplation and wonder
before the things of the past into an attitude of active recognition of
the necessities of the present, passed through the evolutionary process of
the race. The savage, Sir Henry Maine tells us, lives in a state of abject
fear, bound hand and foot by the sayings and doings of his ancestors and
blinded by the terrors of nature. The lightning flashes, and the untutored
mind, trembling, bows before the wrath of a jealous God; the harvest
fails, and the savage humbly submits to the vengeance of an incensed
deity; pestilence destroys the people, and the primitive man sees in this
catastrophe a punishment inflicted on him for his failure to propitiate an
exacting spirit--in these and a thousand other ways uncivilized peoples
accept the phenomena in which nature displays her power, as the expressed
will of an omnipotent being. One course alone is open to them; they must
bow down before the unknown, accepting as inevitable those forces which
they neither can understand nor conquer.
Civilization has meant enlightenment and achievement. In lightning,
Franklin saw a potent giant which he enslaved for the service of man; in
famine, Burbank discovered a lack of proper adjustment between the soil
and the crops that men were cultivating--thereupon he produced a wheat
that would thrive on an annual rainfall of twelve inches; in pestilence,
Pasteur recognized the ravages of an organism which he prepared to study
and destroy. Lightning, famine and pestilence are, to the primitive man,
the threatening of a wrathful god; but to the progressive thinker they are
merely forces which must be utilized or counteracted in the work of human
achievement.
As a boy, I believed my opportunities to be limited by the achievements of
the past. As a man, I see in these past achievements not hindrances, but
the foundation stones which the past has laid down, upon which the present
must build, in order that the future may erect the perfected structure of
a higher civilization. I see all of this clearly, and I see one thing
more. In the old days which I had erstwhile envied, one event of world
import might have been chronicled for each decade, but in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, such an event may be chronicled for each year, or
month or even for each day. The achievements of the past were noteworthy:
these of the present are stupendous.
The process of social evolution reveals itself in these progressive steps.
Because the past has built, the present is building--building in order
that the future may stand higher in its realization of potential life. The
past was an age of uncertain, hesitating advance. The present, an age of
dynamic achievement, leads on into the future of human development.
In the twentieth century:
1. Knowledge provides a basis for activity.
2. The social atmosphere palpitates with enthusiastic resolve and
abounds in noble endeavor.
3. There is work for each one to perform.
The despondent boy has thus evolved into the enthusiastic worker whose
watchword is "Forward!"--forward towards a new goal, whose very existence
is made attainable through the achievements of the past: a goal before
which the triumphs of bygone ages pale into insignificance.
The past worked with things. Pyramids were built, cities constructed,
mountains tunneled, trade augmented, fortunes amassed. Hear Ruskin's
comment on this devotion to material wealth: "Nevertheless, it is open, I
repeat, to serious question, ... whether, among national manufactures,
that of souls of a good quality may not at last turn out a quite lucrative
one. Nay, in some far-away and yet undreamed of hour, I can even imagine
that England ... as a Christian mother, may at last attain to the virtues
and the treasures of a heathen one, and be able to lead forth her sons,
saying: 'These are my jewels.'"[1]
The past worked with things: the future, rising higher in the scale of
civilization, must work with men--with the plastic, living clay of
humanity. As Solomon long ago said, "He that ruleth his own spirit is
greater than he that taketh a city." The men of the past built cities and
took them. They brought the forces of nature into subjection and remodeled
the world as a living place for humanity, yet, save for a shadow in Rome
and an echo from Greece, there is scarcely a trace in history of a
consistent attempt to evolve nobler men.
Material objects have cost the nations untold effort, but human fiber--the
life blood of nations--has been overlooked or forgotten. The world is
weary of this emphasis on things and this forgetfulness of men; the ether
trembles with the clamor for manhood. The fields, white to harvest, are
awaiting the laborers who, building on the discoveries and inventions of
things in the past, will so mold the human clay of the present that the
future may boast a society of men and women possessing the qualities of
the Super Race.
What is a Super Race? Nothing more nor less than a race representing, in
the aggregate, the qualities of the Super Man--the qualities which enable
one possessing them to live what Herbert Spencer described so luminously
as a "complete life," namely,--
1. Physical normality.
2. Mental capacity.
3. Concentration.
4. Aggressiveness.
5. Sympathy.
6. Vision.
These characteristics of the Super Man express themselves in his activity:
1. Physical normality provides energy.
2. Mental capacity gives mental grasp.
3. Aggressiveness. }
} produce efficiency.
4. Concentration. }
5. Sympathy leads to harmony with things and cooperation with men.
6. Vision shows itself in ideals.
The energy to do; and the mental grasp to appreciate; together with the
capacity to choose efficiently, furnish the basis for achievement.
Achievement, however, is not in itself a guarantee of worth unless its
course is shaped by sympathy and directed toward a goal which is
determined by the prophetic power of vision. Such are the characteristics
which, combined in one individual, insure completeness of life. About
them, philosophers have reasoned and poets have sung. They are the acme of
human perfection--the ideal of individual attainment.
Though they have been thus idealized, these qualities are not new. They
have existed for ages, as they exist to-day, occasionally combined in one
individual but usually appearing separately in members of the social
group. They form part of the heritage of the human race, and in spite of
neglect and lack of fostering, they are widespread in all sections of the
population. The production of a race of men and women, a great majority of
whom shall possess these qualities, will mean the next great step in human
achievement.
The Super Man has lived for ages. The Greeks traced the descent of their
heroes and heroines--their Super Men--from the Gods. It was thus that
they explained exceptional ability. Exceptional men live to-day, as they
did in ancient Greece, directing the thought and work of the times. They
possess the qualities of the Super Man--physical normality, mental
capacity, aggressiveness, concentration, sympathy and vision; and, above
all, we now understand that they are not the offspring of the gods, but
the sons of men and women whose combined parental qualities inevitably
produced Super Men. The Super Man is not a theory, nor an accident, but a
natural product of natural conditions.
Though the Super Man may be met with occasionally in modern society, and
though the qualities ascribed to him are manifest everywhere among those
who have had an opportunity for their development; opinions still differ
as to the possibility of producing a Super Race. An even greater
difference of opinion is encountered when an attempt is made to formulate
the means which should be adopted to secure such an end; yet there can be
little difference of opinion as to the desirability, from a national as
well as from an individual standpoint, of creating a race of Super Men.
The call of the present age for a Super Race is thus voiced by Yeats,[2]
"O Silver Trumpets! Be you lifted up,
And cry to the great race that is to come.
Long throated swans, amid the Waves of Time,
Sing loudly, for beyond the wall of the World
It waits, and it may hear and come to us."
We long for the coming of the Super Race. We aim toward this goal. Can it
be compassed in finite time? Is Nietzsche right when he says,--"I teach
you beyond-man." "All beings hitherto have created something beyond
themselves." "What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal."
"Not whence ye come, be your honor in the future, but whither ye go!" "In
your children ye shall make amends for being your father's children. Thus
ye shall redeem all that is past."[3]
Shall we make amends to the future? Come, then, let us reason together
concerning the measures which must be adopted to raise the standard of
succeeding generations. There are three means which lie ready at hand:
three sciences which lend themselves to our task: three tools with which
we may shape the Super Race. They are:
1. Eugenics--The science of race culture.
2. Social adjustment--The science of molding institutions.
3. Education--The science of individual development.
The science of Eugenics treats of those forces which, through the biologic
processes of heredity, may be relied upon to provide the inherited
qualities of the Super Race. The science of Social Adjustment treats of
those forces which, through the modification of social institutions, may
be relied upon to provide a congenial environment for the Super Race. The
science of Education aims to assist the child in unfolding and developing
the hereditary qualities of the Super Man, provided through eugenic
guarantees. Hence, Eugenics, Social Adjustment and Education are sciences,
the mastery of which is a pre-requisite to the development of the Super
Race.